Passiontide Prelude and Fugue

March 19, 2016

Today I would like to share with you a piece which I wrote for Palm Sunday in 1995 – Prelude and Fugue on St. Theodulph, performed by organist Mark Bani of the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, New York, NY. The tune is also known in German as the Chorale Valet will ich dir geben, but in English speaking countries it is primarily associated with All Glory Laud and Honor, a hymn which is sung only on Palm Sunday (the start of Holy Week in the Christian liturgical year).

Pictured above: Mark Bani. [ Photo by Max Shuppert ]

This is a student work which has some flaws (and the performance in this recording also has some minor mistakes in it, and was transferred to digital from the master which was a cassette tape), but good memories return to me when I hear this music. The piece won the AGO-Holtkamp prize the year I wrote it, and it was premiered in New York City at the AGO National Convention in 1996, played by Mark Bani. Mark did a great job, and it was a pleasure to work with him. There is also an interesting story to be told about the performance that did not take place.

This piece was supposed to be played on a high-profile concert at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall by the widely acclaimed organist Michael Farris, but was struck from the concert. Instead the work was played as a prelude to a recital of all choral music, which was scheduled as one among many other events. As I recall, neither my name nor Mark's name were even printed in the program leaflets distributed at the concert. This seemed like quite a shame to me, but I didn't complain to anyone about it. I was briefly recognized at the event. I was also happy enough simply to be there, and I enjoyed the whole experience of the convention.

Some years later, in the early 2000's, I began teaching music theory at Eastern Illinois University. During that time I became colleagues with my former composition teacher and mentor Peter Hesterman. Peter and his wife Debbie often invited me over for dinner, and Peter and I would shoot the breeze. On one of these evenings, I told Peter this story about how my piece ended up on a different concert, and was surprised to find out that he knew something about what had actually happened. Apparently, my piece had been replaced by a piece written by Samuel Adler, who was a colleague of Farris's at Eastman. Peter knew this because he had studied composition with Adler at Eastman, and they had become friends afterwards, keeping in touch regularly by phone. During one of their phone calls, Adler had mentioned something to Peter about having just finished a new piece for organ, and getting a high profile premiere at the AGO conference by asking Farris to play it, and that Farris had to remove one of the pieces he was going to play in order to play Adler's new piece. Peter and I were able to piece together what happened, roughly in order:

1. My piece won the competition and was more or less "assigned" to Farris by the AGO committee to be part of his recital at Alice Tully Hall.
2. Adler made a phone call to Farris asking him to play his piece on the recital.
3. Farris did the favor for his friend, and my piece got reassigned to Mark Bani.

That in itself is curious enough, but the story doesn't end there. By chance, I had also been a student of Adler's for one quarter term at the College Conservatory of Music (CCM), University of Cincinnati, where I was completing my Masters Degree during the time that I had written this piece. The change in the concert schedule had taken place (unbeknownst to me) before I began studying with Adler. I'm fairly certain also that even after he was my teacher, Adler did not realize that he had inadvertently booted my piece off of Farris's concert. It was really too bad for me that the change was made, because Farris's recital was the most important recital of the convention, where no other events were taking place and everyone was in attendance. Theoretically, that could have opened up other opportunities for me, but alas …

As it turned out, I met Michael Farris at the closing party of the convention. I had no idea why he hadn't played my piece, so after shaking hands, I simply asked him if he disliked my music. He replied immediately, "Oh no, I thought it was brilliant!" which confused me. I remember stumbling awkwardly for a rejoinder when someone else grabbed Michael's attention, and that was that.

So much for the back story! As part of the AGO award, the piece was published by Hinshaw Music, and is still available from them.

I'll sign off now with the following thought: things don't always turn out the way we expect them to, and sometimes the way things turn out can seem rather unfair, but in the end, it's how we respond that matters. I'm glad that I was able to be happy with how things turned out, and have never felt bitter about it. It makes for an interesting story, I think. Also, I learned that Michael Farris passed away at the age of 41 just a few years after the conference, in 1999. In hindsight, I wonder what were all the other circumstances that led to these particular outcomes that can now be called history. The world is so full of unlikely coincidences, pieces of a puzzle that can't be solved because we never have all the information.

I hope you enjoy Mark's performance, and wish you many blessings this week.

Thanks for listening, and Best Regards,
Aaron